Harvey Weinstein, appearing at the UCLA Entertainment Symposium in interview with Ken Ziffren, Los Angeles’ newly appointed film czar, called for California to expand its production tax incentives.
“There’s no reason for us not to shoot here, except when you do the numbers here and when you do the numbers in New Orleans, it is much more attractive financially,” Weinstein said in the Q&A on Saturday.

He cited the example of “Southpaw,” directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, as project that could have shot in Los Angeles were it not for the generous tax incentives in the Big Easy.

But Weinstein said that Los Angeles and California “doesn’t even have to give the same discount” to remain competitive, noting the cost and hassle of having to locate actors and other talent in New Orleans is an added expense despite their generous tax incentives.

“Please, whatever you can go with the governor,” Weinstein said to Ziffren, a friend of California Gov. Jerry Brown. Brown has not said whether he would sign proposed legislation to expand the state’s incentive program.

Weinstein also addressed the controversy surrounding Quentin Tarantino’s leaked script for “Hateful Eight” as indicative of the larger problem of piracy.

“It just so unnerves me that people think they can take a script…and put it on the Internet,” he said. “It is just crazy that we are not protecting ourselves as writers, producers and artists. It is just crazy that the public has some weird concept that they can just take this stuff.”

They chose to release the script to a host of people, one of them leaked it, that's why you don't release your scripts if you want them kept secret.

Where in the world would the public get the idea they can "take" something of someone else's? Does he not recognize how hypocritical this sounds after just calling for even more taxpayer handouts? This from the same industry behind the expansion of copyrights to life plus 70 years after death?

Of course, he then goes on to call for special legal arraignments to protect his dying legacy industry:

He said that the industry marketing machine should be able to come up with message of “what a lousy thing it is to do, how uncool it is” and “explain this to these kids who are doing this and proud of it.”

But he also said that there is a need to get Hollywood and Silicon Valley executives in a room to work out a solution. He said that Eric Schmidt and other leaders of Google were “reasonable” to a solution. He said that a problem is that it is up to content creators to constantly file takedown notices to user-generated sites and file sharing sites, a “constant vigilance” that puts the onus on copyright holders to spot piracy.

“We have got to sit down with these guys,” he said.

In other words, he wants another SOPA through the backdoor. If Google wanted to work with him, they would have already. They don't, and the only thing which would get them to comply with wrecking their search engine to favor select Hollywood producers would be legal threats and government force.

Let me clue you in to why it's "cool" to pirate your movies: people hate you and want you to fail.
_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.

Chris, why should there be a "production tax," anyhow? I thought this was a Libertarian site?

You know, I tried to read this article (6x's), within the view that the average American would have read it, and, its context was lost to me. The only (un)reasonable questions I could think-up, were the questions I asked above ^.

As for script stealing, subsidies, and, Edomites - such as Weinstein.... I would give his kind more rich-mans-welfare, exclude anyone without a Jewish last-name from obtaining a patent, and, most-definitely, I would have Sili(CON) Valley work along side the Hollywood fronts. (Perhaps, I'll have to start watching t.v. again...)

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the DMCA and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.